Based on a comic book of the same name, this movie stars Theron as the leader of a small circle of immortals -- people with extraordinary healing abilities who have lived for centuries, devoting themselves to worthy causes. The group is targeted by a corrupt pharma executive who wants to harness their abilities for profit. And they can't easily go to ground to escape him, as someone is newly discovering their own healing abilities and needs guidance.
As far as I recall, this movie never uses the word "superhero" or "mutant" or anything in that space, even though that's basically what's going on here. That seems a deliberate choice to position the movie as more serious, more gritty... and maybe even a little more realistic than the genre usually cares to get. But neither is the movie trying to be dark and hardcore. It's very much an action movie (with very intense fight scenes) -- it just wants you to know it has something to say.
To that end, the key messages of the movie are about the ripple effects of doing good, resisting the toxic pull of cynicism, and other surprisingly hopeful notions for a film that's generally quite brutal. There's another message in the movie's diversity that speaks even louder than any of that. This is a
"superhero team" led by a woman. They pick up a black woman in the course of the story, who becomes at least as much a lead in the movie as Charlize Theron. The team includes a committed gay couple whose love for each other is not hidden in coy glances and chaste touches in the way other genre films commonly treat LGBT characters; their love is loud and proud throughout the movie.
It's all presented in a way that's absolutely insignificant to the characters themselves, while still being bold to the world around them. It's not key to the plot, but it is not ignored by the plot. At times, it does make the movie feel sort of revolutionary.
Don't get your hopes too high, though. Because while a movie like this may never have had a cast of characters like this before, there still have been a ton of movies like this. The Old Guard drinks heavily from action tropes involving reluctant mentors and students, of do-gooders who need their desire to do good renewed, of a naive newbie discovering a fantastical world they never knew of. If this movie is pleasingly light on exposition compared to many other movies of its type, it's because it's adhering so closely to the formula that it knows you don't need the exposition -- you know all this.
I would rather see more stories of The Old Guard than most other movies like it that set up for the inevitable sequel. But I was not so wowed by it that I'm eager for that film to come around. I'd give The Old Guard a B-. It's a tautology, but: if you enjoy movies like this, you'll enjoy this movie. Still, I think if diversity like this weren't unfortunately still a rather rare and novel thing, this would be more easily lost in the shuffle.
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